Lesbian scandal and the culture of modernism
By: Jodie Medd, Carleton University, Ottawa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 254
ISBN-13: 9781107021631
Subjects: History and criticism; Literature and society; Intellectual life; English literature; Modernism (Literature); LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Lesbianism; Homosexuality and literature; History; Lesbianism in literature; Lesbian culture
Description: "Before lesbianism became a specific identity category in the West, its mere suggestion functioned as a powerful source of scandal in early twentieth-century British and Anglo-American culture. Reconsidering notions of the 'invisible' or 'apparitional' lesbian, Jodie Medd argues that lesbianism's representational instability, and the scandals it generated, rendered it an influential force within modern politics, law, art and the literature of modernist writers like James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Virginia Woolf. Medd's analysis draws on legal proceedings and parliamentary debates as well as crises within modern literary production - patronage relations, literary obscenity and cultural authority - to reveal how lesbian suggestion forced modern political, cultural and literary institutions to negotiate their own identities, ideals and limits. Medd's text will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students in gender and women's studies, modernist literary studies and English literature"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction: Extraordinary Allegations: Lesbian Suggestion and the Culture of Modernism; Part I. The Suggestion of Lesbianism and British National Culture: 1. The Suggestion of Lesbianism and the Great War: 'The Cult of the Clitoris' Scandal; 2. Lesbian Ghost Stories and Post-War Culture; Part II. The Suggestion of Lesbianism and Modernist Communities: 3. Modernist Patronage, Literary Obscenity, and 'Doing the Lesbian Business'; 4. Bloomsbury and the Scandal of The Well of Loneliness; Conclusion; Notes.